The conference organiser, Katherine Richardson, says: "This is not a regular scientific conference. This is a deliberate attempt to influence policy."

While the motives of those gathering in Denmark are honorable, their move is deeply unfortunate at a time when the climate change debate could benefit from more regular science and less politics.

Ostensibly, the summit aims to update the findings of the United Nations-convened group of climate change scientists, the IPCC. The IPCC's regular reports are the gold standard in climate change science. Each report – the latest was in 2007 – is the result of years of writing, reviewing and consensus-building among hundreds of scientists.

This process is robust and custom-made to weather criticism. Its consensus findings are incredibly difficult to ignore, and have done more than anything to spread the vital message that climate change is real and it is caused by human impact.

Many of the campaigners traveling to Copenhagen next month have taken issue with the careful work of the IPCC, and believe that politicians should be scared into bigger carbon emission reductions. Richardson calls some of the IPCC's core findings "wishy-washy". This is not a new tussle: even before the IPCC report went to the printing presses in 2007, there was fierce lobbying in the media for brasher conclusions.

A member of the German advisory council on global change, Stefan Rahmstorf – who will speak at the Copenhagen summit – declared back in 2007 that the IPCC was not including "the full story". Based on his own projections, he believed that sea levels would rise by up to 1.4 metres this century.

Studies such as Rahmstorf's gain a lot of publicity. However, most models find results within the IPCC range of a sea-level increase of 18cm to 59cm this century.

Satellite measurements since 1992 have shown a stable global sea-level rise of 3.2mm per year: spot-on compared to the IPCC projection. A 38.5cm rise is a problem, but will not bring down civilisation. Last century, sea levels rose by half that amount without most of us even noticing.

It is easy to zero in on findings that scare us. The emergency summit participants conjure scary sea-level rises – but fail to acknowledge that satellite measurements show the rise is actually getting smaller. Likewise, they highlight the fact that carbon emissions are higher than expected. It seems disingenuous to do so without noting a much more powerful fact: temperature rises are not only lower than predictions based on the IPCC's consensus view, but over this decade have actually been dropping.

Those gathering in Copenhagen are "disturbed" by disappearing Arctic sea ice. But the science shows that global warming is only part of the cause: wind patterns are now in a state that does not allow build-up of old ice. And while the Arctic is doing worse than expected, it is surely important to note that the Antarctic sea ice is above average for the past year.

That climate change stirs up fear in all of us is entirely understandable. But we need to take care to ensure that we are not panicked when we make crucial decisions about how to respond to global warming. To ensure that we make these decisions with clear heads, we need to get balanced natural science, and also balanced economic science. In 2008, Nobel laureate economists who gathered for Copenhagen Consensus 2008 found that even large-scale carbon cuts would make a very poor investment – and prove an ineffective, very expensive way to rein in temperatures.

There is a smarter policy option that would actually do more to fight off global warming: ensuring that reasonably priced alternative energy technologies will be available within the next 20 to 40 years. We can achieve this if all countries committed themselves to spending 0.05% of GDP on research and development of non-carbon-emitting energy technologies. The cost – a relatively minor $25bn a year – would be much lower than the massive carbon emission reductions proposed by Copenhagen summit participants, yet it would do more to fight global warming.

Before the world's leaders arrive in Copenhagen, all of us need to take a deep breath. Campaigners on all sides of the climate change debate have the same desire to ensure that we leave a worthy legacy to the future. Now, more than ever, is the time to allow balanced science to prevail.